Page 108 of Magic Claimed
And then—finally—the tape was ripped off my mouth, the bonds sliced from my arms, and my rescuer crouched by my chair with a look of annoyance.
“Do I have to do everything around here?”
I shrugged. “Somebody had to be the bait, and apparently, I’m more fun to torture.”
“Fine, but next timeyoudo the work and I get to be the distraction.”
“Did you get them out?” I must have sounded a little worried, because I got an eye roll in response.
“Relax, the kids are safe. They were already freaked out by the haunted house vibes, so they didn’t put up much of a fight.”
The words might be grumpy, but I could hear just as much relief as I was feeling.
“And Jeremiah?”
“Monique was right. He didn’t go willingly. He figured out something was wrong and hacked the game. Found a link to the chat where they were doing their recruiting. He was going to rat them out, but they tracked his IP address and kidnapped him.”
But we’d found him in time. He wasn’t going to be a test subject. Wasn’t going to lose his family, his future, or his home. Now, all we had to do was get him back to that home safely.
“Anyone else left in the building?”
I got a long-suffering sigh.
“I didn’t exactly have time to explore the entire facility, but I took care of everyone on the first floor.”
The deep voice coming from tiny, feminine Kes was really messing with my head.
“Can you stop with the glamour now?” I begged. “There’s no one else here to see you, and honestly, it’s freaking me out a little.”
I heard a brief huff, then the air shimmered oddly, giving off a whiff of some unfamiliar magic.
And then Kes was gone…
…leaving behind a tall, dark, muscular figure with golden eyes, long braids, and a terrifying set of fangs that were bared in a slight smile.
“That was seriously the most impressive glamour I’ve ever seen,” I admitted as I stood up and stretched muscles gone stiff and painful from the bindings. “Even I would have had a hard time telling the difference in the dark.”
Impressive or not, we’d definitely taken a bit of a gamble. Had Heather been a part of the welcoming committee, she would have immediately known that “Kes” wasn’t who she claimed to be. And had Blake not been convinced by my warnings about touching his prisoner, he would have figured out in a hurry that there were a lot more muscles inside the glamour than there ought to have been.
“Any unexpected issues with the security system?”
“Nothing my magic couldn’t handle.”
I shook my head. “How did I not know goblins could do this kind of thing?”
As it turned out, Shane hadn’t been lying when he said he got my phone number by magic. Sufficiently powerful goblins could use their magic to circumvent human tech—a fact very few people were aware of, and one we’d had to swear never to reveal.
Shane shot me a disgusted look. “Why do you think? If we went around talking about it, how many goblins do you think would be left?”
Okay, so he had a good point.
Shane eyed me as I swayed on my feet, feeling like my head was spinning in three different directions.
“Your magic back yet?”
I winced. “Shot you before, have they?”
His silence was answer enough.
